Untitled Performance Event That Incorporated Paintings by Robert Rauschenberg and Music by David Tudo R

INTRODUCTION What is THE PHOTOGRAPHER/Far From the Truth? It is perhaps easier to begin with what it is nol. It is not an opera, a semi-opera, an operetta or a musi cal comedy. It is also not a docu-drama, a factual recreation of the life and career of the nineteenth century photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge, who is the work's subject. THE PHOTOGRAPHER/Far From the Truth is a multimedia music/theater work, an exciting collabora tion between major American experimental artists from the fields of music, theater and dance who have come together to create a contemporary performance work. The distinctive tripartite structure of THE PHO TOGRAPHER/Far From the Truth (play followed by concert followed by dance) enables its creators to parallel the sequential movement of Muybridge's pho tographs through a series of stunning visual images, many of which are set off against the pulsating rhythms of the Philip Glass score. THE PHOTOGRAPHER/ Far From the Truth is a unique theatrical experience that arises from important recent developments in the con temporary performing arts and extends the boundaries of musical theater collaboration in significant new directions. EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE Eadweard Muybridge, considered to be the father of the motion picture beca use of his photographic experiments in animal and human locomotion studies, was born in Ki ngston-on-Thames, England, in 1830. In 1851 he set out for New York, where he worked for a London printing and publishing company that imported books into the United States. Four years later he was drawn to Califo rn ia by the pro· mise of the Gold Rush and settled in San Francisco, where he had a bookstore as well as a salesroom. In 1860 Muybridge, fascinated by landscape photography, set out on a trip to prepare himself for a photographic career. Unfortunately, while traveling by mail coach through Texas, he was involved in a terrible accident that, among other things, gave him separate vision in each eye. Muybridge returned to London for medical treatment, remaining there for almost seven years. During his recuperation he learned the photo· graphic process of the collodion wet-plate, and upon his return to Cal ifornia he began work as a landscape photographer in the Yosemite Valley and other loca· tions. By 1868 he was established as one of the bay area's foremost landscape photographers and con· tinued to travel to such locations as Vancouver Island, Alaska and the Farallon Islands. Muybridge then became involved in a project that was to change his professional life. In 1872 Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific Rail road and former governor of California, employed Muybridge to help solve the controversy of whether a horse trotting at full speed ever had its four feet off the ground at the same time. After his high·speed photograph proved that the horse did indeed totally leave the ground, Muybridge retu rned to landscape photography. But he conti nued to photograph Stanford's horse, Occident, carrying forth his experiments in the ana lysis of mo· lion. Once he started doing sequential photographs, he developed a machine (the zoopraxiscope) which allowed the sequences of photographs to be seen through a shutter that seemed to animate them. His horse in motion studies (1882-83), animal locomotion series (1886- 89) and human figures in motion studies (1901) continued his work pioneering the "scientific" breakdown and analysis of motion, leading to interna· tional acclaim and renown. In the midst of Muybridge's career successes came personal calamity. He discovered that his wife Flora, whom he met while she was working as a photographic retoucher and married in 1872, not only had a lover, Harry Larkyns, but that Larkyns was the father of the child he believed to be his own. Muybridge went to Larkyns's home one evening in 1874 and shot him. Arrested and indicted for murder by a grand jury, he was acquitted not by reason of in· sa nity, but beca use the jury felt it was justifiable homicide. Flora died in 1875, at the age of twenty· four, while Muybridge was in South America on a photographic expedition. The rest of Muybridge's life was devoted to his work. When he retired he brought his life full circle by returning to England, where he died, in 1904, at the age of seventy·four. MUSIC The failure of modernism in music is clear. Modern music had become truly decadent. stagnant. uncommunicative by the 1960's and 70's. Composers were writing for each other and the public llidtl't seem to care. People want to like new music. but how can they, when it's so ugly and intimidati11g emotiotral/y a11d illtelledual/y. Philip Glass As the above statement indicates, during the 1960s a group of young American composers became dissatisfied with the way in which serious contemp orary music had evolved. Reacting against so-called "eye music," music so com plex in its formulation that the score had to be carefully studied to be understood, they rejected academic, atonal, serial music in favor of the maverick tradition of experimental music repre· sented by such composers as Charles lves, Carl Rug gles, John Cage and Harry Partch. In addition, they in corporated aspects of such divergent sources as non· Western, jazz and rock music into their work. A style of music thus came into ex istence which opposed the complexity of contemporary composition with works that deliberately and severely restricted the materials and resources employed. Because this music para lleled developments in painting and sculpture of the period, which also restricted the scope of its ex· pression, it was labe led minimalist. The earl y progen· itor of this style was former jazz musician La Monte Young, whi le the seminal composition in this genre is usually identified as Californian Terry Ri ley's In C, writ ten in 1964. In this work fifty-three short musica l mo· tives are repeated as often as the performer wishes. Prolonged repeated passages are, in fact, one of the characteristics of minimal music, along with short catchy melodic fragments and simple cho rdal har monies. Music critic Tim Page has written that mini· malist music features "incessant repetition of brief, elegant melodic fragments that weave in and out of the aural tapestry," becoming "a sonic weathe r, a kalei· doscope for the ears that slowly turns, resolves, and develops." Philip Glass, composer of the music for THE PHOTOGRAPHER / Far From the Truth, began as a min imalist composer with such works as 600 Lines, a series of short phrases with minute alterations that were marked off like a list. By 1974, however, he was making his repet itive rhythms more com plex, thereby {CjC>2r, '(If'( adding an emotional dimension to the reduction and repetition of minimal ism. In 1981 he was quoted as sayi ng, "I no longer participate in minimalism. Work· ing with the theatre has been an enlargement of that." Another composer whose work has also been called minimalist, Steve Reich, also feels that the term is too restrictive for the complexity he now incorporates into his music and has suggested "modular" as an alter· native description. Although Philip Glass continues to write non· theatrical compositions for his own ensemble, his work has become more and more theatrically oriented, beginning with his tenure as music director for the Mabou Mines experimental theater compa ny. It was Einstein on the Beach, his 1976 collaboration with director-designer Robert Wilson, that launched Glass in the direction of major stage compositions. A fi ve hour "opera," Einstein on the Beach did not use a text per se, but featured vocal music using solfege sylla· bles and numbers which copied the structure of the music. Einstein on the Beach became a landmark event of seventies' avant-garde work, a stunning example of how music and visual images could be combined in a contemporary version of Richard Wagner's gesamt· kunstwerk, a total, unified work of art where a grand synthesis of all the contributing elements is achieved. Although Einstein on the Beach was designated an opera, it did not share many features with the tradi· tiona! examples of that genre. Following the success of Einstein on the Beach, Glass was asked to write an opera for the Netherlands Opera. This work, Satya· graha, using incidents from the life of Gandhi as the basis of its libretto, used a full orchestra rathe r than the electronically amplified ensemble and was written for trained singers. The repetitive, modular structure of Glass's music was thus enriched by the increased resources he had at his disposal. The success of Satya· graha has led to a subsequent opera commission by the Stuttgart Opera, where Aknaten wi ll be given its premiere in March of this yea r. Glass continues to ex· periment with various forms of music/theater, includ· ing some, like THE PHOTOGRAPHER/Far From the Truth, where the main th rust of the action is not car· ried by the vocal music. Whether written for the en· semble or orchestra, voice or instrumentation, the music of Philip Glass and his contemporaries presents a rhythmic, lyrical example of contemporary, serious musica l expression. THEATER The history of theater in the twentieth century can be viewed as a series of reactions against the natu· ralism and realism that took root in the 1880s and continues to exert influence today. Some of these reactions- expressionism, symbolism, the theatrica l· ism of Luigi Pirandello, the epic theater of Bertolt Brecht, the theater of the absurd-were primarily literary in nature.

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